How about a checkbox in preferences that lets you use the legacy transform feature we've been so used to for the last 20 years? Great for new users and all that, but for people that have used the software for a long time, now we press Shift and it un-constrains proportions.

So there's a checkbox for using Legacy Undo under Keyboard shortcuts (also not a huge fan of those new changes either), why not do the same for Legacy Transform in preferences? The fact that you have to resort to notepad to sort this out is a bit stupid in my opinion.

Honestly I can't imagine how the new transform is great for new users either. I tried once more to get used to it, spending a full day with the new transform. But because smart layers and shapes are not scaling uniform - I'm getting confused of the mixed behavior. I honestly still don't know which layers scale uniform or not, groups, multiple selections, smart layers, text layers, regular layers....It's a complete mess and I can't imagine anyone prefer it this way, unless one is completely rookie in the program. I find it seriously provoking that Adobe can make such a stupid change and just keep ignore paying customers in threads like this that doesn't have a single good thing to say about the change. I have added the userpref.txt change, but it's still annoying nonetheless, because I do not understand the logic at all for doing this. And it completely contradicts their very own argument for adding multiple undos, which were to unify the experience across Adobe programs.

Also now when doing free transform, the rotation boundingbox around corners are moved a lot closer, and that also breaks the user experience for no good reason. Before you could rotate the transform box wherever you have the cursor outside the box, now you need to be up close to the corners. My list of things getting worse by each update is expanding every year.

The transform reference point in version 20 is not working like it did in previous versions. In past versions. In past versions when the reference point was moved to a new position by sliding the reference point to a new location with the mouse or by option-clicking to reposition the reference point, the transformation scaled around the point. Now, this is only available by holding the option key modifier. As an advanced user, I would prefer to go back to the older way or allow me to change the behavior of transform in Photoshop preferences.

When using image resizing or classic crop mode after drawing the crop area, resizing it will resize it locked to the initial drawn ratio. To get the correct resizing functionality you have to hold shift down. Holding shift should be what locks the ratio like it previous versions. This needs to be fixed or at least an option in the settings.

I feel like an idiot! Why doesn't Adobe inform? Why do they make such unnecessary changes?After I tried and sweared for half an hour, I found:New in Photoshop CC version October 2018 (Version 20.0)When converting most layer types, such as pixel layers, text layers, bitmaps, placed smart objects, simply drag a corner handle to scale these layer types proportionally. If you hold down the Shift key while dragging a corner handle during conversion, these layer types will be scaled non-proportionally.

I have never felt that the Shift/Contrain was an issue and don't understand why Adobe felt that needed to change.

Although I still would have been annoyed at having to retrain muscle memory, I would be fine with shift/constrain being reversed if it were CONSISTENT, but it's not. Now I have to think about what type of element I am trying to transform before I hit that shift key. I don't want to think, I just want to do. I use the transform function regularly and now I'm constantly hitting the undo command because I forget to check what type of element I'm transforming before I hit the shift key or not.

Which is easier to remember?

Shift = constrain

or

Shift = uncontrain on raster layers, text layers, and any group of elements that contain at least one raster layer or alpha maskShift = constrain on shape layers, groups of shape layers only, and in other Adobe products

And Marla only described the consequences for scaling constrain behaviors. It all gets even worse if you try to perspectively transform or distort while constraining the movement of the anchors to straight lines. Everything is totally messed up, depending on the layer type. The most annoying change since the creation of Photoshop!

The time I've spent trying to decipher all these months of "getting nowhere" comments, to cut through the anger and ridiculous, unproductive BS, simply to try to find an answer of how to simply get back to how we are used to work with "shift or no shift" (trained by adobe products no less) is ludicrous. I can be "retrained" but seriously... at the very least, there should be a quick work around, and there should be an EASY and direct way to find an answer to something that have so many people struggling. I personally do not want to hold shift down to to purposely transform/distort imagery. We've simply been trained otherwise, and it's not consistent with other adobe products.

I'm not Howard I'm the lead digital artist at his business. I should start by saying that. I've just got to log into our adobe account to post this.

Copy/pasting with a little bit of censorship from my personal facebook account that an adobe rep asked me to post here.

OMFG I hate Adobe's
change to the transform functionality in Photoshop. I've been trying to
get use to it all week and it's absolute garbage and the
PSUserConfig.txt trick isn't undoing it. I had to revert to old versions on of couple of work's computers because some freelancers we have in just wern't having it. I really spent the week trying to adapt and adjust to the change but but I've gone from being accepting of the logic of the change to bitter and angry.

It's such a necessary
thing that's been standardized across the industry, Adobe changing this
is equivalent car company being like, 'Hey, I know you're used to manual
gear placement on our cars and every competitor's car being 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, but, what about we change to 1, 3, 2, 5, 4. Great right!'

And ya, I'm being harsh and
rude but you've ruined a major part of tool that I have to use for my
job every day.

My Daughter, who is the Art Director for a mid-sized printing company outside of Chicago,150+ employees, told me that tech service had updated her PC, not her MAC, to the latest version of Photoshop. They are not supposed to do that without her permission.She said, "Nothing works like it should anymore and I am having it switched back to 2018".Like so many professional of all expertise levels, she is now taking a hard look at Affinity Desktop.So am I and the more I look, the more I like!

I run a group for in-house designers of LinkedIn and Facebook with over 25000 members. I recently asked the question, Did holding the shift key bother anyone? I got the answer I expected, holding the shift key to constrain the aspect ratio when sizing an image bothered no one! Not holding the shift key however, that bothered many people, for various reasons. Most just said it was really slowing them down. I agree with them, it makes you lose time, and time is money. Others felt like it was a step toward making Adobe product work more like Microsoft products, and that sent a shudder through the group. The thing that bothers me more than that it doesn't feel thought out, for a couple reasons, one, the way it flashes and jerks to tell you not to hold the shift key, that feels broken. The other reason is you just did it to Photoshop and nothing else. Granted it isn't a huge thing, but it's one more thing I have to remember that works differently between Illustrator and Photoshop and InDesign. Every update I hope that the tools get more aligned so my job is easier, but this time it feels like the interfaces are moving farther apart for the first time. I can honestly say I have not loved everything ever done on Adobe update, but I got used to it after time, this the first update that's made me want to go back to the last version.

Using one finger to hold shift to constrain has not once crossed my mind as an issue in 20 years. No finger strain, no pulled muscles, not a thought. I had never heard this ever brought up by anyone I've ever worked with. Using fingers to control a keyboard is something that we all do. Why would this particular command be an issue? Frankly reaching the thumb over to use Ctrl on a PC vs CMD on a Mac didn't even bother me much.

Some people like this feature. It should have been provided as an option for them, rather than to abruptly change this classic behavior that most were accustomed to.

I am close to afraid to comment here based upon the anger in the comments already posted. It may come as a surprise to many but logically to me and many photographers, the default should be constrained because we are generally dealing with image materials and need specific HxW ratios.

That having been said, it seems that adding a checkbox somewhere in the preferences dialog to control whether the default is constrained or unconstrained should be a simple fix for Adobe engineers.

I think the problem here Joel is that logically it does seem like a good idea. In fact, I can see Adobe doing it for that reason. Problem is that people are used to something else for 15+ years. For power users, this is a huge step backward. I'll be surprised if Adobe doesn't implement a Legacy Undo very soon. The fact that people would prefer not to use the software at all because of this is a big thing. At least you can fix this with a text document in the preferences for now, but that new smaller hit area for rotate while transforming is the real deal breaker.

Hi Joel... never be afraid to speak your piece! I didn't like the new transform because of the hundreds of thousands of man hours I got used to the "classic" transform and didn't even have to think about it. Again, never be afraid to speak your mind about this or any problem. That's how we get better.

Well that depends on what genre of photography you’re doing, because I am a photographer too but in what I shoot I don’t always need to constrain proportions.

Plus, if you shoot portraits or school photos you can use Lightroom to batch crop photos to proportion. No need to do that in Photoshop as most other genres like landscapes have odd sizes and don’t need to be resized to proportion in each and every case. I used this tool every single day since 1998 & this has slowed me down considerably. I can’t be slowed down when I have deadlines.

I would not have mind the change if it was consistent. Every kind of layer, especially Smart layers. But also shapes and everything else. Because I don't see the logic in them scaling non uniform and bitmap layers and text scale uniform. Also for those of use that switch between illustrator and photoshop all day long, its a hassle to learn different muscle memory for every program.

But if Adobe had mad a consistent change across everything, I would have been positive to learn the new way. But the way it is right now it's impossible.

I agree with you Joel, I don't think it should just go back to the way it was. Honestly, it probably should never have been set up that you hold a key to not distort something you were sizing in the first place. Now that it has been that way for 20 years just changing it with no easy way to keep it the way we are used to smacks of a monopoly that either is out of touch or doesn't care about its customers. Doing it one program and making the interfaces of their programs differ from one another is really annoying too.

Has anyone given any thought to why they did this? Perhaps it's the iPad. A full version of Photoshop for iPad is due out this year. There is no key to hold down for constraining while sizing on an iPad. If this is the reason I think I'm even a bit more pissed. I already feel like Apple is neglecting the Laptops in favor of IOS devices and pushing me toward needing one to do my job. If Adobe is now onboard with what feels like an Apple agenda, in my opinion only, I am really annoyed.

How about constrained rotate? Or constrained angled lines? Using the pencil tool to draw in a straight line? Should we hold shift to draw freehand? What about shift selecting objects in Illustrator? Should objects automatically multiple select?

I just want to shed a little light on this for people who only use Photoshop. I would consider myself a power user. I use 3 Adobe products daily as part of my job (Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator) for the past 10 + years. Shift has always been used to constrain; whether it be to constrain while resizing, selecting, drawing, or moving... that is the purpose of shift in any Adobe application. By changing the behavior here, they broke their own system. Shift works inconsistently in Photoshop. And resizing works differently across applications. To say this is confusing would be an understatement. It's really thrown a wrench into my workflow.

It's worth noting that the tool Adobe broke is literally named Free Transform. Free, to me, would mean unconstrained.

While I don't think holding the Shift key is a big deal, perhaps a fair solution would be one of two things: Either revert back and give photographers and option to constrain. Or what I believe is a better solution, revert back and introduce a Constrained Transform tool, leaving Free Transform untouched.

--

Also, Kenton. I really hope you're not right about the iPad version (though it does seem likely). I don't own an iPad and likely never will. But I'm already considering jumping ship from Adobe.

Kenton Smith I think it might be because of the full Photoshop version for the iPad.

I read an article regarding the full PS version for the iPad but didn't want to post the link in case it went against community standards.

The underlying code is the same as desktop Photoshop, and although the interface has been rethought for the iPad, the same core tools line the edges of the screen.

Quoting from article - "Bringing a program like Photoshop to the iPad is a monumental task. The project started 18 months ago when two Adobe engineers asked to carve out time to bring the Photoshop codebase to the iPad. “There was just a lot of doubt until what we call the “proof of life” moment,” says Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer. Senior director Pam Clark agrees: “We fully admit we were surprised when the engineers showed up, and it was quite powerful and smooth.” That “proof of life” product inspired the design team to start focusing on the app’s user experience, with each new build focusing on a different Photoshop workflow."

They are trying to have the same code for desktop PS and PS for the iPad and I believe this has a big impact on the many bugs found in PS 2019. I find this version so buggy and frustrating and I've gone back to using PS 2018.

Matthew Frederick I totally agree. . . Actually I think they should revert back. Adobe should have never meddled with something that wasn't broken. They might say that they were improving the tool but I think perhaps for the benefit of iPad users.

> There is no key to hold down for constraining while sizing on an iPad. >

While this is very likely the reason to change it (not the reason to dispense with an option for desktop users), don't forget that it's only a convention. iPad apps allow for both constrained and unconstrained transforms. How do they do it? With a gesture. So if you want to be consistent with what iPad apps have tended to do, you favor constrained — no gesture— and unconstrained uses a gesture. Even there, apps have an inconsistency between raster and vector transformations. (I have a new iPad, and I'm still struggling with how many fingers and is it raster or vector, since they require opposite gestures. My ancient iPad didn't have apps on it sophisticated enough to matter.)

It's convention, but convention doesn't mean it can't be optional in desktop apps to follow the convention. Will mobile apps change the way we do things? Almost undoubtedly. But with options, we can make the change gradual if we find ourselves using our touch screens more than our keyboards, so we're thrown off when using desktop apps, or not make the change if we rarely ever use touch screens for art and design. It's more for Adobe to support, though, and they may have decided it's a step too far.

If it’s an improvement great, we’re pros, we can adapt. But change it in the 100s of places it needs to be changed. This embarrassingly sloppy work shows that nobody at Adobe really thought this through, or that the ultimate decision makers simply didn’t care.

Cristen - The convention was shift-constrain. It was that way for 25 years. This is a change that wasn't asked for. Also, there is no reason to constrain (no pun intended) the desktop app to the mobile app's methods. It's a completely different interface.

Alan, yes, I do know that. This change wasn't asked for by any of us who have used PS for decades. BUT, Kenton Smith has made a point that deserves consideration. It goes a long way to addressing the "why" of the change that was made. Adobe doesn't exist in a closed world. And they cast their net far and wide when gathering data from users, asking them what they find trips them up. The fact that the convention inside of Adobe doesn't correlate directly to what many popular current apps outside the Adobe sphere are doing (I've heard MS doesn't follow Adobe's convention, but since I use nothing Microsoft, I won't swear to that) is likely the issue Adobe chose to address.

BTW, Affinity Photo, which so many PS users say they're going to switch to using whenever PS does something they don't like, ﻿doesn't﻿ use the Shift key to transform an image layer with constraint. They use the Shift key to ﻿free transform. ﻿On1, otoh, follows the now defunct behavior of Adobe, and uses Shift to transform constrained. IOW, Adobe has inconvenienced many of us, but it hasn't done anything out of step with what everyone else is doing, which is to say, NOT settling on an industry standard for when to use Shift to constrain and when to use Shift to distort.

As far as I can see, no mistake was made in allowing no modifier to produce a constrained transform when working with image pixels, in order to "play well with others." The mistake was not allowing us to opt out. Which I've said repeatedly throughout this endless thread, and just did say in my last message.<sigh>

Lots of mistakes; not identifying how fundamental 'Shift to constrain' is, so not changing it in the 100s of places it needs changing, no fallback, and now no acknowledgement or roadmap for doing it right.

We're pros, we can adapt to fundamental changes but this isn't well-executed. It's low-quality, half-baked work that deserves to be called out. What an embarrassment.

If Adobe has screwed up Photoshop so bad in favor of the upcoming Photoshop for IPad like so many of us think, the issue is that the ‘Real’ Photoshop for iPad isn’t ‘Real’. To completely change the behavior of basic tools that we have used for years rather than to develop a ‘Real’ version of Photoshop for iPad is not accomplishing a quality product for either version. As bad as I may want to use Photoshop on my iPad, I would rather mirror my iPad to my Mac to use for a drawing pad. I still see that the new version of Photoshop is too full of bugs and other bad behaviors that I’m not likely to ever use anything later than the 2018 version.

The only other device I will ever use it is on my MacBook Pro (15"). I find it incredibly annoying to edit anything on iPhones or iPads regardless of the version. I have to be able to see what I'm doing, and those screens are too small, and uncomfortable to hold too.

I enjoy my iMac way too much to ever give up editing on it. And like you said, if this was so it merges with the iPad, then I can only hope Adobe realizes that there are still a ton of people out there who enjoy editing on their iMac's or other type of real computers and not these amateur devices. There's no way in hell I would ever give up editing on my desktop. Plus, I am a power user too; I bounce between Photoshop + Illustrator + InDesign and also Audition and Premiere, and Acrobat, so there is no way I could get my work done on an iPad/iPhone.

I have a bad feeling that this is coming from a community of people who are only hobbyists and who have zero understanding of how professionals use, and have used these products, and this will be very damaging for us pro's if we let it happen. I don't have an issue with having versions of Photoshop for iPad's or iPhones, however, there needs to be a boundary of how much amateurs can alter these professional products before we pros have to look into other software options to get our work done in a timely fashion.

I complreely agree! iPad and specially iphones are for watching with fun, but not for serious work. Adapting to touch screens means less options and therefore more steps that mean more and confusing work for profs.

I agree in part, but not completely. If you've ever used Affinity for the iPad, you know you can do a lot to start a project, then finish it at your desktop. This can be as necessary in professional settings as it might be fun for personal use. The time is beginning where the line between mobile and desktop is getting blurry enough to transition.

But since I'll have to keep on saying it or you all with think I don't like choice—that doesn't mean I think Adobe should force behavior on us. They should be expanding options for managing our workflow. In the bad old days of limited horsepower, that may have made sense, but today I believe most computers they support can handle more options for how each individual chooses to work.

Similar to the move to Lightroom CC from Lightroom Classic, it seems like Adobe is focused on a different set of users rather than those of us professionals using their apps long term. For smart phone photographers, LR CC web based and PS on the iPad seems like a great idea and will make that group of users happy. Why they feel the need to change existing apps rather than just offer a set of new apps for that special group of users is a mystery to me.

Most of us professionals are using computers with large displays to make editing easier and far more accurate that it ever will be on a phone or iPad screen. If I was making the decisions at Adobe, I would want to capture that new group as well but would work extremely hard to maintain my support from the existing customer base using our products.

Why they put Lightroom CC in the top part of the Adobe Cloud App list of apps and bury Lightroom Classic way down below is an indication of where Adobe seems to be going. For me, this is the bellwether of things to come. I have been a loyal and supportive Adobe customer and professional teaching classes in LR and PS for many years. Even I am worried about where this is all headed.

So far, I continue to be loyal and support Adobe but like the rest of you, I am carefully watching to see where this is going.

While I’m convinced this change was made to make the default behavior of this basic behavior consistent between desktop and tablet, tablet has totally different inputs and muscle memory which is what confounds me about the decision to make changes that would ostensibly make Photoshop perform more consistently between platforms. It doesn’t. People have been saying that maybe Adobe is becoming more like Microsoft, but even they maintain experience differences between different types of screens. Xbox is different from pc, and tablet mode is different from desktop in Windows. Adobe is trying to shoehorn a baked product into a different shaped loaf pan.

I’ve been using Photoshop for design work since the mid Aughts and this is the first time I rolled back to an earlier version of an Adobe product.

Agreed, touch is a completely different context - everything works differently so it's totally fine that desktop apps work differently.But, if you decide to change a fundamental industry-wide convention, then do it properly.

There is a video tutuorial for iPad's "Real Photoshop" showing that there is infact another method of using the left hand input. Its a floating, onscreen, single button that could be used for the "shift/constrain". IMHO: What a joke, anyone who is willing to use the free hand for input is inevitably going to want a full keyboard. One extra button cannot turn a novelty hobbie tool into a professional tool, Adobe.

I don’t think “Adobe” doesn’t care; what I do think and sort of know to be true is that Adobe is influenced by people who are not actual professionals. Professionals in Graphic Design with a four year degree that is. None of those would decide on a whim to constrain the “free” transform tool.

Photoshop is professional software. They should have done that to Elements which is for amateurs & occasional users.

There are too many good aspects of the software for me to presume that no professionals are involved with the architecture of the software. For the most part, I don't have too many issues overall with the software.

I think this was an ill-informed update, perhaps, as some suggest tied to an overzealous idea to consolidate functionality with iOS. I'm not sure what happened here, but surely they did not consult people who are long time users.

Mark, I know that. I didn’t say ‘everyone’ who worked on it was an amateur, far from it. However there are certain groups with ties to Adobe who cater to amateurs or occasional users and in my personal opinion I don’t think such groups should influence the development of Photoshop which is a professional software program. Those groups should influence the development of Elements.

I completely disagree that anyone who works with "amateurs" should push them in the direction of using Elements, or that they should themselves use Elements and "influence" it. Some of the best photographers and photo artists I know, or whose work I have seen, are "amateurs." Some people start out as amateurs and wind up professionals. Some professionals go the other direction. It's fluid, since "professional" only implies money exchanged for services or product.

The word "amateur" itself only means "one who loves." Not "one who is too lazy to learn to do anything." They know the software, are less limited than many a "professional" who specializes in a single workflow, and require far, far more from a program than Elements is capable of providing. In fact, many came from Elements. It was far too restrictive for their needs. Photoshop is, in fact, easier to use if you bother to learn how.

So I would respectfully request that "amateurs" be shown a little more respect. There's no meaningful fence that keeps amateurs out. Money earned isn't is. Some of them work harder to learn Photoshop and use all of its potential than designers I've known for decades who still won't use Curves, but have been making a living at it since v2 of PS, and are d*mn good designers. They're just unwilling, and feel too busy, to learn new workflows—Levels work fine for them. I see professional photographers whose go-to is Levels and Color Balance, and not much more. They're still good photographers.

I sympathize with all who are upset with this. I'm one who is having trouble adjusting. None of us like to be thrown off badly by a "simple" change that isn't simple for us to adapt to. It hurts many professionals the most, short term anyway, because of time constraints on getting product out. But professionals DO use touch devices. Serious artists, whether they get into galleries or sell online, or not, DO use touch devices. Professionals who don't use Photoshop as their main program, but have to use it for their work, DO use Photoshop AND touch devices. And so do a lot of "amateurs." Why wouldn't Adobe do anything at all to accommodate all of them?

These are ALL Adobe's customers, and all deserve some attention. I don't believe that Adobe looks at the person who takes selfies and lunch pics to post on Instagram and FB as their most important customer base—though who knows but what these folk might not be tomorrow's professionals. I think Adobe pays attention to far more of their base than just one element. I could hope for more accommodating attention than we got with this feature, but this IS an outlier from Photoshop's usual way of dealing with accommodating as many people as they can. Think of all the "legacy" we have now, which didn't use to be the case in ancient days when a change was a change and that was it. They started introducing "legacy" back with changes to Adjustment layers and Brightness/Contrast, and it's been not quite a standard since then, but very common.

I hope the way this feature was handled isn't the future, but I also hope people don't say "get rid of the amateurs" from being a part of the Photoshop (and Lightroom) family.

I just want to say thank you to Cristen. Just because I am semi-retired and have income that makes it unnecessary for me to earn money doing Photoshop does not mean I should relegated to using Elements. I know a lot of so-called amateurs who are very very good using Photoshop.

I don’t know that anyone has been saying that amateurs should be treated as second class users. The point is that Adobe made some fundamental changes with no simple way to revert to a preferred legacy setting. Ignoring day-to-day users is insulting. I literally lost money because of their choice. I don’t think enthusiasts are put out economically.

Adjusting would be the case if Adobe did this properly. i.e. identify it needed to make a fundamental change to all graphics software, then change it everywhere (both within PS and across CC). Then we could simply 'adjust' to the change.

But Adobe didn't do it properly. The implementation is a half-baked embarrassment that creates huge inconstancies fundamental to everything we do. I actually have no issue with changing the behaviour but the way Adobe did this is incompetent on so many levels.

I absolutely agree ! I am a professional retoucher for the last 15 years. I make my living using photoshop. If photoshop wants to be a professional program it has to focus foremost on it's professional users.I retouch a lot of e commerce and there time and efficiency everything. If for some reason something slows me down I loose money.Creatives who make their living using it have to be the main focus before creatives who don't make a living with it, however super talented or amazing they are.

I agree re the small efficiencies you mention. I've worked with and trained many people at work and lots wonder why some earn much more money. A huge part of the answer is efficiency when it comes to the small stuff that's done 100s of times per day.

absolutely, I don't have time to fiddle around and get used to changed tools that have over 10 years of muscle memory or however you want to call it. If I have to do 100 images and I get slowed down by 5 minutes each time I loose 500 minutes, more than a days work.

The swapped transform constraint is a major pain in the ass. Can you please, for once, just put it back the way it bloody was. It still catches me out .. Every. Single. Time. I have 20 yrs of muscle memory with this. Not to mention you left it the other way for literally everything else.

@Cristen: With all due respect, someones's photographic ability does not lie in Photoshop tools as most artists don't photograph something with Photoshop in mind. It's usually the subject, composition and light that they are concerned with. "Photographs" are finished in Photoshop; they do not start in Photoshop.

My remark in regards to amateurs was precisely what was already mentioned after your reply: time efficiency. I retouch, I design graphics, I bounce between programs, and my clients want their images within a specific time frame. "Amateur" is not a derogative word. It isn't an insult either. It is a word that describes someone doing something for personal enjoyment instead of a salary. I know of plenty of amateurs who come up with great ideas, however, in the case of Photoshop and this tool, whomever came up with it failed to see the effect it will have on those who get paid to create images for others, and who have deadlines to meet. It may seem trivial for you, but every image you see in a grocery store went through Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Images you see in malls, on vehicles, on online shores, all went through these same programs, and there are people who are getting paid to create them, and these people were heavily inconvenienced by this change. Now, instead of focusing on the creative aspects of "X" design, we have to sit there and fiddle with a tool. That is time consuming, and unnecessary for us to do. When I mentioned amateurs above, I referred to those who show no respect towards professionals. Sadly, there are plenty in that category. So, it's hard to have respect for them, when they show no respect for us.I usually ask amateurs to show respect for those of us who get paid to do different design and photo jobs and not meddle unless their idea will actually help us. My husband learned how to do Taxes when he was very young, and he's been doing our taxes for decades now, however, he does not involve himself in the software development teams at TurboTax our of respect for those who work there and know what they need to properly do their jobs. We ask for the same kind of respect. If we don't meddle into your field of work, please don't meddle in ours.

Also, if people frown so badly at Elements and act insulted at the suggestion of using it, then how come Adobe hasn't discontinued it yet? Just curious. If there is so much aversion towards it how come it still exists? To me it seems logical that it would be discontinued if customers were that unhappy with that product.

In my option, I think certain amateurs prefer to brag they are using Photoshop (even if they're only using the Saturation slider) as a way to appear important. I've known such characters in my 20+ year experience with this program.

Also, using curves versus levels as a photographer means nothing, I use what will give me the best result for the photo I am working on, and thankfully there are a million ways to accomplish something in PS. So, I didn't see the point in mentioning that small detail.

Professionals do not have a single workflow. Each image asks for something different unless someone is only shooting shoes on white background. "They know the software, are less limited than many a "professional" who specializes in a single workflow".Professionals aren't "limited" by this software in the least. I use it for work and also for personal stuff. Always. "Limited" is the last word I would ever use to describe using Photoshop.

> someones's photographic ability does not lie in Photoshop tools as most
artists don't photograph something with Photoshop in mind. >

Again, I beg to disagree. I know many photographers who have good composition and exposure, but fail to do well in post and the image fails to be as good as it could be— along with photographers less skilled, perhaps, in the technical issues involved with capturing the image in camera, but who do excel in post. The best photographers are also often aware of what they can do in post, just as Ansel Adams was aware of what HE could do with the negative.

However, I accept that you didn't mean to denigrate the work of amateurs, or how important Photoshop is to many of them. I know that there are plenty of people out there who have no idea what it takes to do a good job, and think their every Facebook post is worth looking at without their making an effort for it. They think the computer does it all, or should, with a single push of a single button, and we here do know better.

I did acknowledge that professionals are usually the most directly affected by changes as they are working to a deadline and still have to produce good product. I work to deadlines, too. I'm not at all unsympathetic, or even completely an outsider. I, too, was trained in graphic design, so I'm also not entirely unaware of what designers do and the many hats they have to juggle with extreme pressure on their time.

> Also, if people frown so badly at Elements and act insulted at the suggestion of using it,>

I don't think anyone frowns so badly at Elements, but they may well be insulted if they're told because they don't work for hire, they should be using Elements and not make any requests to Adobe for features that would enhance their experience with Photoshop. They're not all incapable of judging which application suits their needs best. Elements is great for certain types of creative endeavor, but not ﻿every﻿ creative endeavor. That's also why we have Lightroom something or other.

> Professionals aren't "limited" by this software in the least>

No, professionals aren't limited ﻿by﻿ the software. I said their use of it can be so highly specialized, they have no need for many of the features. That doesn't make them any less the professional. I do know some of them. Great work, but don't ask them to vote to combine Calcs with Apply Image in a single enhanced dialog. Don't even ask them to vote to include Scopes or enhance the Actions panel, or the many other features that could do with a boost. They probably don't care that so many ancient filters still don't have a preview, or don't run in 16 bit. I still acknowledge that those features they have need of are extremely important to their making a living—witness the many of us who use Free Transform on a daily basis (do we now change its name to Fixed Transform??), bringing down the house over the change. But just being a professional doesn't necessarily mean you have a need where many others might indeed have a need.

I think Adobe, ﻿in general﻿, try not to be this disruptive. And I don't believe they acted in bad faith here, although I expect to be pilloried for saying that. I don't think they really understood how difficult this was going to be, so they missed how easily they could have avoided all this. I don't know their job, either, so I guess that makes us equal on that score.

I absolutely do NOT want Adobe to dumb Photoshop down, or I'll be out of a program I can use. And I absolutely do want to see more flexibility in how we use it, not less. But for that, we all deserve a seat at the table. Good ideas can come from anywhere—just as bad ideas can come from anywhere too.

Everyone who'd like to see this behavior changed back without having to write a custom script to do it (steps are described earlier in this thread) or to revert to an older version of PS, remember to click the "Me too" button at the top of this thread.

for those of us who've been using Photoshop for decades, the change to constraint modifiers is a frustrating break to our workflow. It's reflexive to ADD a constraint by pressing modifiers. Pressing to REMOVE them is counter-intuitive. I'm willing to accept that some users might like the new way, but please allow us old lags to turn it off! I've got rid of it by using the text file trick in the AppData folder, but surely it makes more sense to put it into Preferences?Every time you change long-established keyboard shortcuts (and I'm looking at YOU, Ctrl-F), you reduce usability for those who've been supporting you for years.

Dennis, I read the article, but I am not sure what you're specifically referring to. All those marketing campaigns need images, and those emails are designed between all these programs still, and a company like Travelocity will not sit there and wait longer to send out a campaign because designers have trouble with PS' tools malfunctioning.

Myself as a photographer, I shoot for other people's marketing/advertising campaigns. My interior photos go forward to promote the interior designer, or sell a house, none of the photos I shoot for work end up on their walls or my walls as "wall art".

This is why these are professional products; they are designed to create advertising materials and other promotion materials for businesses or educational facilities like schools and colleges.

The fact that amateurs can design different worlds and play with plug-ins is great, but the #1 purpose for these products is business advertising and not someone's personal greeting card. And no one should be offended by that either. Amateurs have a 'choice' in what program to use, they aren't bound to use Photoshop, professionals really don't, especially if they want to produce great work.

All the software we have available today from anyone who makes software can be used by both pro's and amateurs, my earlier point was in regards to the fact that those who use the software for work/business need to take priority when it comes to making major changes like this one. Someone who barely has a handle on Photoshop, and barely knows their way around it shouldn't be the deciding body as to what tools need to change. You won't walk up to TurboTax people and tell them that there needs to be less math in the program. Same here.

@Cristen: >Again, I beg to disagree. I know many photographers who have good composition and exposure, but fail to do well in post and the image fails to be as good as it could be— along with photographers less skilled, perhaps, in the technical issues involved with capturing the image in camera, but who do excel in post>

"Photography" was and still is made from two major components: shooting & editing. Both are needed regardless of what editing steps are taken. Each photo needs something edited be it only contrast, or heavy facial retouching due to acne . In 99% of the professional cases, excluding Journalism where editing is not allowed as to not distort the facts reported, editing is required.

However, the "concept" of a shoot be it a portrait session, a food shot, an interior shot is not done with what editing steps someone will take "later" 'unless' it is going to be a composite shot and not a photo of an actual subject on its own. Here's a visual example of what I am talking about: John Wilhelm. If you go on his website under "Best Off" https://www.johnwilhelm.ch/bestof you'll notice the images being composited were shot with "compositing" in mind. So, the subjects were positioned to where they were going to be placed in the composite shot. The light was adjusted and placed according with the overall light in the images so as to not look stupid. Yes, we can manipulate everything with Puppet Warp but for a composite to look great, you do have to shoot the photos with that in mind first. Now, if you go to Joe McNally's website https://portfolio.joemcnally.com/index you'll see his photos are about the subject and not a later composite shot. He isn't shooting that ballerina in a studio and later places her on that roof, he shot it on that roof and did minor editing in PS.

I went to a proper photography school and not these ridiculous "piece together info" online training places, and the first thing we were taught was to always try to get the photo right in camera in regards to composition and light, and shoot in manual so we have full control of what's in front of us. If someone calls him/herself a "photographer" but relies on Photoshop to make that photo better that's not a photographer. That's just someone who hopes software engineers and "their skills" will help make their photo better. Later, we were taught how to edit different subjects, and most importantly "when" to stop editing. Some people go overboard with editing and it shows. The point is that if you want to call yourself a photographer you need to master both: shooting & editing. They are both needed to produce great work. If someone doesn't know how to edit, they need to learn. If someone doesn't know how to shoot, they need to learn. This is why photography programs should be reintroduced in colleges asap. Too much crap is being perpetuated online and people/new generations can't distinguish a good photo from a bad one anymore.

Yes, if I shoot fine art flowers for example, I am free to decide what steps to make in editing to achieve the image I envisioned in my head before I took my camera out. However, I will not shoot a fine art flower shot until I find the flower I'm looking for = my subject. Sure, anything can be distorted in Photoshop, but then that's not making me a photographer anymore, it makes me a digital artist. There's a difference. Yes, I can paint a flower in Photoshop too if I have painting skills, but that's not making me a photographer anymore, it makes me a digital painter. "Photoshop" is a tool we need as photographers. In Ansel Adams days they used real dark rooms, now Photoshop is our main dark room since most other pro photographers except for sports and journalism photographers, shoot RAW and those images need to be edited. it's not a "want" to be edited" they actually 'need' to be edited.

I don't think Adobe is trying to be disruptive at all, but I do think sometimes a certain community of total newbies and amateurs is having an input and that's a problem for the rest of us who have deadlines to meet. And I mean the kind of amateurs who want to be fed everything with a spoon while they make no effort to actual learn something. I don't have a problem allowing amateurs access to BETA versions and so forth, but like I said before, those who work in PS every single day for hours and hours need to take priority when it comes to making changes that affect our work timelines and efficiency.

I hope adobe puts back this tool to what it was, and focuses on improving other areas we actually need like previews for some filters etc.

I agree, well said. Also don't forget Photoshop is used by many different professions. I'm a digital artist, I use it to paint - never photography. And in my profession this new transform change is annoying as well, and I can't see anything positive coming from getting used to it.

I wrote a looooong list myself of what improvements Photoshop actually need - in my frustration of the cc 2019 update which hardly can be called a v 0.1 update, imho. I wrote up features that would have been great and small improvements of current features that feels unfinished at the current stage. But I didn't bother to send it, because I feel that Adobe only listen to a minimum of requests and need 1000 people to stand up and scream before they even consider anything from the community....sadly.

Heya, Joachim: I’m sure you hve some great suggestions as to how Photoshop might improve.

Take the time to create a forum post for each one, explain it as well as you can, and then encourage everyone you know to come vote for it. Festures requests with a high vote count get the most attention from the PS team.

> because I feel that Adobe only listen to a minimum of requests and need
1000 people to stand up and scream before they even consider anything
from the community....sadly. >

That's kind of like not voting and just hoping the candidate you like wins. I don't know where all Adobe goes to get ideas to work on, or how long our ideas would take to implement, if they chose to, but I'm sure that the more we contribute to the process, the better chance we have of getting something out of this.

No one of us is important enough to make them do anything. No 1000 of us are, either. But the more we act like a community with some shared interests, like we have been throughout this thread, regardless of disagreements over who's an important customer, the more likely we are to get some of our ideas followed through on.

I've seen a few things over time that I kept on about come into being, and lot of things I heard others talk about that I didn't recognize would be so useful at the time, also happen. I don't think they sit around in a locked meeting room and invent all these changes on their own, and I'm rather glad I'm not using v2 of Photoshop.

We forget that they've done a lot when we're focused on what they've not done or what they've done that we don't like. I get frustrated and my language deteriorates rapidly—or maybe gets a lot more inventive—it's how you look at it. But a lot of the good done I'm sure has been due to our incessant complaining about this feature or that. They seem to move slower than a snail much of the time, but the competition is gaining on them, so that might act in our favor so long as we don't give up and we do speak out. Even if nothing comes of it for any specific feature, it's pretty certain that nothing ﻿can﻿ come of it if we say nothing.

Absolutely, I'm glad for the features Photoshop has, don't get me wrong. It's still the nr. 1 program for most artists and photographers for a reason. And a lot of what they have done is amazing. But I still think new features in or even the smallest bug requests to fix takes too much effort to get heard. I don't want to place each feature request and fight with claws and nails to get people to upvote them until eventually Adobe listens. Like the brush palette features that came in 2017 (folders etc), finally!, but that was a feature that hundreds had been crying out loud for for many many years - and you allready go plugins better than what adobe eventually made because people got tired of waiting. Same for color wheel, and same for smoothing brush stroke feature....

So yeah I'm really happy about what Photoshop is, but I wish features were added slightly faster and more bug and features reports were heard or at least discussed!!

Like this complaint about the uniform scale is a good example. Not a single voice from adobe, no arguments or reason or any hint that they care at all what people thinks. From my experience, they will never change this back! Or they will let it stay like this for 2-3 years and maybe consider it IF enough people complains years over years, they might add an option for it....eventually.

...so yeah, it's kinda hard to "act like a community" when this is the general feeling a lot of users have.

I agree with you Cristen. Adobe likely has up to 14M Photoshop users. As you can imagine, as much as 80% of them are not dependent on Photoshop for their daily income. They also are less likely to be impacted by any change.There is another company, Affinity Photo, that is hot on the heals of Adobe. While it will take a long time, years, it is likely that Adobe will redirect some of their resources to growth in other areas rather than fight an uphill battle. I haven't seen it but I know that Affinity also has an ipad product.AI, Artificial Intelligence, for example, offers some great new avenues for software development. Then the question comes, do we go in that direction or somewhere else.Will investing in AI give a good return? Does creating a Photoshop product for iPad have a better return?So many questions!But you are right. A unified effort with many is the best possible way to get their attention.

I personally am not on board with AI too much, because that means the "software engineer" is the artist and not me. In which case there will be no need left for artists to provide beautifully designed imagery or exist. There is a point of speeding up certain processes, but when it comes to creativity, allowing AI and the "one button solution" will not help artists and creatives in general. What that will do is have folks unfamiliar and uneducated into graphic design or photography simply apply some option without regard if it is appropriate or not with the image at hand. Like slap a sunset slider to a 12pm shot making it look ridiculous. Editing is decided by the image , and the creator of the photos' original vision; if we take every vision and turn it into a button/slider then we will have no more art or artists.

AI would have its best use in situations where 200+ photos need the same treatment, but we already have that in Lightroom, so it's been covered.

I think Adobe is trying to reduce the work involved in sending updates through the clouds; it would be easier to send 1 update for all platforms than ten, that I get, but in that case we need to have the option to turn off certain things that don't work for power/long time users since they are the ones who spend their days working in PS.

> I personally am not on board with AI too much, because that means the "software engineer" is the artist and not me.>

Mostly I hate anything "AI" for the same reason, but I have seen it work pretty well in some practical areas. Topaz has AI Clear and AI Gigapixel (with human controls). These are filters that depend upon close up computer analysis to be able to do a better job than humans. I don't own either, but I will probably at least get AI Gigapixel eventually for those times I need to upscale by a lot. (And yes, I know garbage in/garbage out, but if that's what you have to work with, at least make it the best garbage, to paraphrase someone who always has the best of everything. . . ) From what I've seen, it does a better job than On1, which does a better job than PS. So there are certain areas where computer analysis could probably help us—but not if it amounts to Auto color or Auto tone, where all the creative decisions are removed by algorithms.

I can embrace AI/Sensei development (better CAF anyone?), but not if it were trying to "level" the playing field between creatives and people who think 5 minutes is a bit too long to work at creating something. I can remember Painter used to sell itself by saying "you don't need to learn to paint—we can do it for you." LOL

Computer industries are always trying to make themselves indispensable that way, and it's up to us to push back—asking for the tools that help us be more productive, better creatives, not better robots. We just can't give up, not because we get discouraged. We do, and we can each of us step back for a bit to refresh, but we can't give up because there is literally no other option—unless we can get voted onto the board of directors, that is.

Agree. We also use CAD software here, and my colleagues often want these new features and shortcuts to speed workflow and make things easier. However, the more shortcuts they add, the less we are depended on for our actual skill. Eventually we won't be needed and won't have jobs! Not to mention you lose the artists 'hand' in the resulting work. Thirdly, you will be expected to finish things quicker because your manager thinks you are using these magic shortcuts.

There are shortcuts I deliberately won't use because I prefer a natural feel, and some shortcuts look cheap and digital, and end up looking the same as everyone else using those shortcuts. Kind of like how you can tell when someone uses a Photoshop filter. Often someone will ask me to 'just use the filter to get this effect!' I'm like 'nope'

We learned this stuff because we did not have shortcuts, we manually did the work. How will anyone ever learn anything if things are automated, and will art/design look like.

> We learned this stuff because we did not have shortcuts, we manually did
the work. How will anyone ever learn anything if things are automated,
and will art/design look like.>

Probably be a reflection, not a comment, upon the rest of our society.<sigh> With easy button, sound bite responses to everything, we'll have to let go of the phrase "it's a brave new world." Nothing brave about it if you don't take any risks. LOL

I wonder if it means they do understand, and are being careful about their response to this.

What I hope does not happen, because I see a lot of folks suggesting this. Is that they go ahead and change ALL relevant scale tools in all programs to behave like this. So in all programs, SHIFT is unconstrain. That would personally blow my mind.

Make this current behavior an option for those that want it, and resort back to the way it was.

I doubt this change was requested by anyone in the professional community. My opinion of course.

@Joachim: I don't want to sound defensive here, but the way I see this is like if you were working on a 200 layer document and you made a mistake on layer 4, and now you have to go all the way back to layer 4. (Not you Joachim, "general" you/Adobe).

I think Adobe is looking to move forward with the technology and the options added into PS, and this was a mistake they made because they were influenced by a specific group. I am sure we won't know the details of this mistake, but hopefully, they will be able to back track to "layer 4" and fix it for us so we can continue working smoothly. I keep my hopes up because I know these engineers work really hard to create this amazing program for us, so I don't think there is any ill intent towards users considering that users own the wallets to pay for this software, and can zip them up if this goes too further south.

My concern in regards to the iPad/iPhone thing is for Photoshop to not become Final Cut Pro like. I used to have and use Final Cut Pro and then it got chopped to pieces around 2012 and turned into total crap, so I hope this won't happen to Photoshop and the rest of the programs in the suite.

I've noticed that, too, although those who are usually here probably had nothing to do with the decision. But no one has come forward to explain this.

If they did go ahead and do what others ask for by making ﻿everything﻿ constrain proportions without the Shift key, that still wouldn't solve anything. If the reason for this was to be more in line with other programs and apps, they'd be out of step again, since the apps that use the Shift key to freely distort raster appear in my experience to use Shift to constrain transforming vector. So like I said before, there don't appear to be any good consistent rules out there.

It just plain out needs to be an option, and I think the best place for that would be exposed on the Options bar—link, everything is constrained and its a sticky setting; unlink and everything is freely distorted and also that's a stick setting. Then we could use a modifier to temporarily do the opposite. The link and having sticky settings, as well as modifier overrides that are temporary, are all conventions used in many different programs, and throughout features in Adobe. So. . . Why is that such a problem to implement?

At least if it poses endless troubles for Adobe, couldn't someone who does this sort of thing for a living come and explain that to us? I remember Chris Cox would tell us why it was so when we asked for something on the U2U forum that was untenable (under current hardware and software constraints). He wasn't the most popular person for coming on and saying "no can do." But he was helping us "accept the things we can't change."

Bridge and other Adobe programs have a bug report and feature request page with voting system, on the adobe support site. I could not find one for Photoshop. The latest release of Bridge also has fundamental pointless changes that have ruffled many feathers. At least there's a way to properly respond.

How can we be sure adobe folks follow this Photoshop Family thread. Are there any official folks here already? Please reassure us that adobe is taking notice...or not.

The "silence" In my opinion may be because of "where" this came from. The leaders of that "community" always do unsavory things and then are silent about it.

One "justification" I heard on a photography show talking about these Adobe changes and which I found it to be absolutely preposterous, was how "newbies", like 12 year olds, can't be bothered to hold down a key. So, now Adobe is asked to dumb the software down so 12 year olds grow up lazier than they were already. No one considered how this wasn't done across platforms, or how it will affect professionals, so anyone who is starting in PS today, will be confused as to why the "free transform" tool is constrained.

No one should have any issues following this. I even saw a Braille version of it, so not even blind people would have an issue with that. But it seems that certain people can be doctors but can't learn these shortcuts.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that there is no proper way to learn Photoshop outside a graphic design college program except for the classes on Lynda.com which are the ONLY ones comprehensive enough for someone to properly learn how to use Photoshop from A to Z. So, we are dealing with a lot of people who chose not to subscribe to Lynda.com or go to college for graphic design and whom are trying to piece things together from YouTube and the likes. This is very damaging for our Photoshop community because most videos on YouTube are incomplete, the guy/gal speaking mumbles a lot and there is no proper ladder of learning from beginning to end. Not to mention once you've learned something, and start using it over and over until it becomes a reflex. People at large need to understand that there is a learning curve with Photoshop just as much as there is with learning accounting and fly fishing, and skipping steps will only lead to confusion, terrible imagery, and weird retouching jobs.

My kids watch these because they want to take photos sometimes, and of course need to edit them too.

There is no need to change our tools because someone is too lazy to learn the right way.

FYI: There are features for Photoshop & Lightroom that are voted on in the KelbyOne community forum, and this is another reason why we're having issues. Most folks there aren't working pro's, but merely occasional users with very little knowledge of Photoshop. Most are retired, and aren't looking to become pro's either.<Bridge and other Adobe programs have a bug report and feature request page with voting system, on the adobe support site. I could not find one for Photoshop. How can we be sure adobe folks follow this photoshop family thread. Are there any official folks here already? Please reassure us that adobe is taking notice...or not.>

I am not opposed to changes like I said before; but the changes have to help with our workflows and time management constraints and not go against them. I am sure this didn't seem like a big deal, but that's because those surveyed were not professionals; just amateurs who aren't paid to work in Photoshop. In that community there are surveys sent about these features, like a one question survey, or 4, 5 question surveys, and that is NOT where these survey's need to be sent. These need to be sent to those working in ad agencies, marketing agencies, newspaper and magazines, and anyone's media/marketing departments; professional photography studios for people, food, products, architectural because all use Photoshop one way or another and can add value to it instead of devaluing it. Places where work is done with "time" in mind.

@Joachim: <But I still think new features in or even the smallest bug requests to fix takes too much effort to get heard. I don't want to place each feature request and fight with claws and nails to get people to upvote them until eventually Adobe listens.>

I was replying to this above. Meaning, the reason it takes so long is because they are working so far ahead that it's hard to backtrack and fix something. That's what it looks like to me. Their focus is continually moving forward, so when a mistake like this happens, it takes sometime to go back and fix it.

@Alexandra Giamanco Well, the HiDPI UI fix took about 4-5 years since people started complaining. the requested brush improvements took even a LOT longer than that. There's a limit to how far one should backtrack tbh :D ...Either the team is too small or things take too much time to make in the Photoshop code. Nevertheless it's kind of unfortunate when a feature takes so long that its nearly obsolete when it actually comes out.

@Joachim...I agree 100%. I think taking "years" to do something is crazy, but I have to wonder one thing: are the people who work on the back end of PS new? Are they software engineers who are just starting out and have never worked on it ever before? Because that would be one of the reasons why it would take so long. If the team working is located in one place and not all over the world, then you're right, there is no reason to take this long to add/remove something in the back end. I once heard that those who work on photoshop are not in the same building as those who work on Illustrator, so having the work on the back end outsourced in different countries may be why it is taking this long. This is not good obviously.

I agree about the brush tool; I asked for years indeed for it to allow us to organize our hundreds of brushes.

@alexandra giamanco, Yeah, and Look at what CC 2019 brought us, a rather simple color wheel (compared to coolorus), a small upgrade to the HealBrush tool and force shifting two keyboard shortcuts around (multiple undos and free transform)...If that's the rate of features on a yearly update, then one can't expect to a feature request in decades!

@Warren, well maybe the way they solved required something from Microsoft. But I had other programs that supported both low and HiDPI monitors at the same time, so it's not something that couldn't be done. Also, they way they added it initially before it was fixed, it would have been better if they let windows do the job by scaling it instead. Which is something most were stuck with unless doing an elaborate hack. But once it got fixed, it was solved very well from Adobes part, gotta give them that :)

I hate it, sorry! When I hold shift to remove the constraint from the image it's super twitchy both with my Mac track pad and my Wacom tablet. I have no idea how to fix that and it's super frustrating. I'm running IOS 10.13.6

I also dislike the fact that it's difficult to get back to the legacy version. There should be a toggle in Preferences. I performed the fix, and it defaults back to the new resize version when I restart my computer.

The whole thing is a buggy mess. I have returned to cc2018 and have no intention of running the update for 2018 for fear of Adobe screwing that up as well. There is no way I will use the new 2019 version unless the bugs are fixed along with a legacy option given to us.

Can someone answer a question for me? I have been paying for my Adobe CC subscription almost since it started. The reason to pay is for support, access to the server to store files you want to access from any Adobe product and share with people. None of which I use. The only reason I pay for CC is the keep the most current version. Well, I just uninstalled the newest version and went back to the last version. So what am I paying for? Do the programs still work if I stop paying?

I'd start paying again when they release a version I want, but in the meantime, that's a pretty good monthly saving.

Nope. The programs don't still work. They work up to the point you haven't paid for. LR will allow you to continue to access the Library module.

Part of the reason for subscription was to have a revenue stream they could count on to put into R&D, whether or not we like what they R&D. '-} They offer more for less, for those who use many of the apps some of the time, or for those in the Photography Plan, and we pay them that "less" both to get more and, hopefully, to keep that R&D going.

Me, I'm on the fence about it. I see the advantage to Adobe, and the potential for advantage to us, (and the Photography Plan really is a fair value for the price compared to the competitors), but whether or not we get enough in return for our fee is a very personal decision, one that can change if we are happy with alternatives and what they cost.

Good to know before I shut off my CC account. It's a sad day, I have never stepped back an update in 20 plus years of using Adobe products. I've been slowed by updates until I got a handle on a new tool, but Photoshops and Illustrators changes have caused a big hit on my productivity, it is just too much to swallow this time.

For what it is worth,my Daughter the Art Director, will not let IT update her department MAC's at this time until she has a chance to determine if this is a good idea. She is in the printing business and Illustrator is a big part of what they need to do their job. ﻿

I can't get used to this!!! - It's different for raster and vector layers! - The constrain button doesn't work as it should! - It's different in other Adobe products! - It's called FREE TRANSFORM ffs, not proportional transform! It was fine the way it was. Please revert!! This is really slowing down my workflow! I use Photoshop every day and I use both vector and raster layers so I can't get used to this! It's just horrible! REVERT!!!

In the context of photoshop (which seems to be the conversation) ... and changing something as historical and embedded into the muscle memory of almost every user of the software ... I'll stick with - "Literally the stupidest thing ever ..."

Haha, sorry, the overuse of "literally" is just a pet peeve of mine and I was making a joke. The reference to "Florida Man" is about the running gag that all the craziest news starts with "Florida Man...". Ex. "Florida Man Enters Convenience Store Carrying Live Gator, Chases Customers" More exciting news can be found at https://floridaman.com/ (no affiliation... just found on web search)

I've read on more than one photo forum where the name Scott Kelby comes up but I don't have any verification, but really it's the responsibility of the product manager to say yay or nay for any feature, whether it's being added, removed or changed. Have we seen THAT person take even a gram of ownership. That's what I thought. At this point, with the complete radio silence from Adobe, I think the term coward(s) starts to be appropriate.

@Peter: Scott Kelby runs a forum that is not filled with working professionals in any creative field. The only professionals there are the very few instructors left and who come in the community forum to paint this unicorn world photographers live in apparently, and not much else. His target demographic is rich retirees who can spend a lot of money on the gear he promotes from B & H, ProPhoto, Platypod and others. There are maybe 2 working professionals in a creative field there, so sadly for us who have deadlines to meet, we have no representation there, and total newbies and leisure rich amateurs continue to decide what happens to Photoshop and also to Classic Lightroom. I was a KelbyOne member for over 8 years, started with NAPP, and once the transition happened and that 'community forum" was opened you wouldn't believe the kind of stuff that those folks want. Also, there is no coherent way to learn Photoshop on that platform; it goes from learning blending modes to advanced color grading nobody understands or will use in the photos they take. Also, none of those people do graphics in PS or bounce between PS + IL + ID, so I expect more things to be ruined for us as long as those are the people who get to vote on Photoshop features. There is also a "buddy buddy" system there between Scott Kelby & Terry White, Julianne Kost etc., and none of them focus on "how" real professionals that work in magazines, ad companies, clothing companies, etc., are using Photoshop. It's beyond being "cowardly", it's to see how much they can dumb it down for their retired users who have no deadlines and have lost the ability to learn too, hence my earlier comment that those demographics should stick to Elements. I have been to several of their "live recorded" classes and I was the only one in the 40's age group; everyone else was over 70 and 80 years old and there was no one in their 20's, or 30's. In the last two years 1% of their instructors were actual pro's and everyone else invited to "teach" has a different day job or is a total amateur not interested in making an income in an ad agency or as a professional photographer. KelbyOne is the worst thing that has happened to photography since "auto" and Social Media/YouTube came along. The worst, and those of us with actual work and have deadlines will continue to suffer as a result. I freelance, but I still have deadlines, I am not "free" to be done "whenever".

It's really sad that the focus of a company who is known and respected for producing professional software is to now dumb it down to address non working in creative fields demographics.

There's a balance with professional software at this level between accessibility for first-time-users and core functionality workflow for the people who use it on the daily for work.Thanks for pointing out the Kelby angle. If the community forums of weekend photographers is louder than the one of designers and production artists, the PMs are naturally going to start gravitating towards features that appeal to the amateur. Instead of focusing on things like performance, file bloat, consistency, compatibility, you get things like the "New Start Screen" and fly-out video help toasters on your toolbar.

Adobe is going the way of Apple, and while it seems inconceivable we’d use anything other than Photoshop, it was inconceivable a few years ago that I would eradicate Apple software from my life, and regularly test Windows (v10 is much improved). We shouldn’t kid ourselves, Adobe has its eyes on other markets and we’ve all noticed it with the ‘features’ added in recent years. It may take years but I’m definitely keeping my options open.

I had no idea Kelby was still a thing. I thought he'd flamed out after his excessive claims for Lightroom vs Photoshop were debunked — if no one remembers, photographers who didn't make the move were all said to be willing to destroy their original data, so everyone should want to dump Photoshop and use Lightroom, which preserved their original data.<sigh>

But yes, I agree with Max. If the Kelby organization has the ear of Adobe, not as one more, but as a heavily weighted group compared to the rest of us, it does explain the trend towards pushing features on us that they ﻿think﻿ will be less confusing to beginners. I do so hope that's not true. There are even a lot of amateurs, photographers and artists, who need the real power of Photoshop, and as I keep saying, are willing and able, at all ages, to learn what they need to learn so they can do what they want to do.

They do, very very deeply too. What I don't understand are two things:A) why AIGA isn't 100% involved with Adobe to where Adobe is consulting them first when making major changes like this one.

B) why is Adobe hell bent on supporting amateurs instead of professionals who use their products for 12+ hours a day.

I can actually answer "B" by simply saying "newer generations" woke up on YouTube and only a few people from these generations still value a 4 year solid education in graphic design/photography (because the cost of those degrees versus wages is lopsided), and so they're dumbing stuff down for YouTubers and weekend users at the request of KelbyOne wannabe's, which is very disappointing, annoying and sad for us pro's. I wish Bert Monroy could save Photoshop for us, but I don't know that he can or is willing to.

Ben, don't you find that Windows basically crushes one's creative soul? Okay, I'm over stating it a bit. Windows has gotten to be very Mac like over the years with some improvements; however, the Windows Color Picker burns a hole in my mind's eye anytime it pops up.

Tim - did you just post here without reading through the entire thread. The answer has been posted over and over and over and over again - and then again. All you have to do is make a small simple text file, save it with a specific name and drop it into a specific folder. Done. That ought to take about two minutes and you'll be exactly where you want to be and it fixes the crop tool too. Yahoo.

Is there also a script to deactivate that always interfering Auto-commit of transforms by clicking in the canvas? This is even more annoying for me than the completely messed up integration of propoprtionals transform!

I can do that, but I only rely on hashtags as I don't have any followers on Twitter, and I don't use Facebook either because I have no use for it. But yeah, if you have a larger social media following I think it would help to share there. I was thinking about graphic designer associations like AIGA, since they have more credibility IMO against social media and the disaster that has turned out to be.

The problem I see is that Adobe will be their own downfall... alll they need to do is acknowledge theres a fook up, ask us to hang in while they address the issue (in our favor of course) and all this shyt will go away... insted they insist on being dumb, IMO to show us whos boss and to piss us off more because we complain.

I had two instances where these forums here actually solved a problem that was very significant.

First ---In 2014, my Wacom had a problem toggle with Shortcut X between foreground and background. ( o I thought( At that time I retouched skin with the grey layer technique as I learned from Kathrin Eismann's photoshop book. This technique was not working anymore.Toggling had a lag or did not switch at all.After speaking to Wacom extensively, they blamed it on photoshop. Turns out it was a photoshop bug.Photoshop did not reply directly.I published it on macnn ( a forum that doesn't exist anymore) and wrote to Kathryn, telling her that the technique she describes is useless.Upon that "pressure", Photoshop software engineers specifically wrote a plugin that got rid of the toggle problem and later implemented it in an update.

Second ---One or two years later, designers changed the Interface and it was quite a nightmare! All the colors were gone and all was much harder to see. After lots of retouchers complained a couple of us wrote and even drew up examples what we thought will work better, like colors for layers and colors for paths even ( that came later)

Throughout the process the communication was not the greatest. But in the end they changed it.I am sure the people who are directly involved read these comments and will take them to heart.I am not sure how much they have to say in that matter.It might be a marketing thing or a political issue in which direction photoshop will head, I agree.

What might work for the the future is to report this to people like Phlearn, photoshop magazines, retouching forums etc.

MacNN at that time picked up the story and that definitely helped.

I think what doesn't help is being rude or advising to use pirated software.

Then like me I will just skip reading the comment

I am of course very upset about the unworkable update and hope this will get resolved soon.

A lot that has been is here is 'over my head', but I use PS all day (and at night too). I went back to 2018. After reading what has been posted here, I'm not alone in what I was thinking. The update that I installed was 'broken' and I was at my wits end until I went back. My only advise is to fill out those surveys that show up from time to time and make a comment. I know for sure that someone reads them. Good Luck!